Justin Amash prevails as amendment fails

Rep. Justin Amash suffered a legislative defeat on Wednesday in a fight to rein in the NSA that elevated the Michigan Republican’s status as an independent-minded libertarian willing to stand up to powerful interests in both parties.

The House voted 205-217 to narrowly defeat Amash’s amendment, which would have stripped funding for an NSA program that collects the telephone records of people in the United States — but not the content of calls. The measure drew the ire of House Republican leaders and the White House, sparking a behind-the-scenes effort by House Speaker John Boehner to prevent the provision from coming to the floor as part of the larger debate over the defense appropriations bill.

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But the Ohio Republican was once again unable to control the conservative wing of his party — a theme that has dominated his tenure as speaker — with civil liberties advocates in the GOP threatening to oppose any attempt to quash the amendment.

Boehner avoided an insurrection in the ranks by relenting, allowing debate on a provision that represented a perilous decision for Democrats and Republicans alike: Those who voted against it now face the prospect of attack ads back home accusing them of acquiescing to the mass collection of data on U.S. citizens.

Against that backdrop, the controversial measure drew spirited debate on the floor.

“They’ll tell you that the government must violate the rights of the American people to protect us from those who hate our freedoms,” Amash said of his opponents, posing this question to his colleagues: “When you had the chance to stand up for Americans’ privacy, did you?”

Meanwhile, opponents lined up to denounce the measure, saying it would bring an end to a surveillance program that has thwarted terrorist attacks and saved lives.

“Have 12 years gone by and our memories faded so badly that we forgot what happened on Sept. 11?” asked Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The Michigan Republican pledged to add new privacy protections to the NSA program, emphasizing that it currently collects “no emails, no phone calls, no names and no addresses.”

“Passing this amendment takes us back to Sept. 10,” he said. “This isn’t a game — this is real. It will have a real consequence.”

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a separate NSA amendment, put forward by Rep. Mike Pompeo, that was intended as a middle ground but was blasted by civil liberties advocates as achieving nothing. The measure would ensure that the NSA is barred from acquiring or storing the content of emails and phone calls of people in the United States — but it would allow the NSA to continue storing phone metadata.

“It is intended to clarify some things that have been said,” the Kansas Republican said of his provision, expressing support for the NSA’s current surveillance activities.

But supporters of the Amash amendment said the Pompeo measure would do nothing to rein in the NSA’s current surveillance efforts. “This amendment does not fix the problem,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).

Earlier this week, the Obama administration moved to scuttle the Amash amendment, blasting it as a “blunt approach” and dispatching NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander to Capitol Hill to lobby against the provision in top-secret meetings with members of both parties.

“We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community’s counterterrorism tools,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

Amid the squabbling, Amash refused to back down, fending off fellow Republicans who said it would be impossible to debate the amendment on the floor without divulging classified information and reiterating his threat to undercut party leaders if they moved to block his provision.

“I’ve made it clear that I would not support a rule that didn’t have something like this,” he told reporters earlier this week.

The showdown is unlikely to be the last word on the NSA’s surveillance programs, which have come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents to The Washington Post and The Guardian newspaper describing the agency’s far-reaching efforts to scoop up electronic communications.

Snowden’s leaks exposed the existence of several NSA surveillance programs, including the one that collects telephone records. Amash’s amendment, which would have effectively ended the blanket collection of such records, sparked a debate in Congress in which several members called for a review of the laws governing the NSA’s programs.

“It does seem the degree of surveillance is in excess of what my understanding was,” said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas).

Four members — two Republicans and two Democrats — signed onto Amash’s amendment as cosponsors: Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). But Amash himself was the driving force in battling back against efforts by Boehner to prevent a vote on the measure.

“I think I talked to John about it once or twice,” Mulvaney told POLITICO. “Justin’s been dealing primarily with the speaker.”

For Amash, who’s been floated as a possible Republican contender in 2014 for the Senate seat held by retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the standoff represented a chance to raise his profile on an issue important to his libertarian followers.

And it sets him up as a potential contender to take the mantle from retired Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas as the de facto leader of the libertarian movement, which has picked up steam in recent years.

Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), is also working to position himself as the head of the GOP’s libertarian wing, repeatedly hinting he might seek the presidency in 2016.